Because "Girl" Doesn't Mean "Degrade Me"

We live in a world where “news” and magazine headlines are primarily about female celebrities gaining 20 pounds instead of what’s actually important like… I don’t know… death, famine, war, maybe the economy. They’re just suggestions, but if Kim Kardashian’s weight is more important, by all means continue degrading women.

Society is focused too goddamn much on women and how we are supposed to portray ourselves.

“Only weigh 100 pounds!”
“But be curvy! Men only like women who are voluptuous.”
“And have a thigh gap and perfect hair and skin and makeup and a sun-kissed glow and…”

My god, what the hell do you want from me? I’m not made of Play Dough; I cannot contort myself into these impossible dimensions. I like my pasty white we-doubt-you’re-from-Florida skin. I’ll wear a full face of makeup and curl my hair one day and wear my pajamas all day the next and I don’t want to hear one word from you about it.

We need Feminism because figuring out who you are as a person is hard enough without every fucking person telling you that you have to fit into a particular mold.

We need Feminism because when Angelina Jolie decided to get a double mastectomy to prevent her from getting breast cancer, scrutiny was thrown at her from the media saying she wouldn't be a sex symbol anymore, but when Lance Armstrong lost one of his testicles to cancer, he was a hero that we all needed to bow down to.

We need Feminism because I should be able to look however I damn well please without being called a slut. I should be able to have sex with as many or as few people as I want and not be considered a whore or a prude because it is no one’s business but my own.

We all know the quote “on Wednesdays we wear pink” from the movie Mean Girls, but why doesn't anyone remember Ms. Norbury when she says “…you all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores.”

Feminism isn't all man-hating psycho women. Some of us are actually pretty cool (me) and all we want is a little equality. The definition of Feminism is the “advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.” And to be totally honest, we aren't equal on any of these grounds.

Yes we have the right to vote, but men dominate Congress. It wasn't until the most recent election that the record for most women sworn into the U.S. Congress was broken and it’s still only 100 members out of 500. I’m not really good at math, but 500 is a hell of a lot bigger than 100. So politics are still being dominated by men like it always has been instead of being 50/50 like it should be.

I’ve already explained the social inequality of women. We’re judged by society, men, and other women based on our looks, actions, words, and anything else we want to use to represent ourselves.

Economically men have always been superior to women. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 was the first bill signed into law when President Barack Obama was sworn in to end pay discrimination against women. Are you fucking kidding me? It took 44 presidents for it to be a law for women to be paid the same amount of money for the same job as men! Thank you, Obama!

There's a million reasons to support Feminism. In Cambridge, England two pro-woman groups asked people passing by why we needed feminism and these are their responses:

In regards to women and feminism, everyone should live by Coco Chanel's words, "A girl should be two things: who and what she wants."